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moonlit walk in the Dominican Republic Tuesday, February 26 2013
location: Room 1336, Natura Park Resort, Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
Today's beach reading was a New Yorker article about a maverick Scotch manufacturer (though the article insisted on referring to the product as "whisky").
I wandered off to the pool at one point and happened to be there for part of one of the many "activities" that take place there. Gretchen and I had been avoiding these activities, since they mostly cater to the young and the inebriated, but sometimes there is something to be gained by watching people doing something one never has any intention of attempting (this explains the popularity of reality television). Today's activity was a beer drinking contest. Two contestants faced off across a table and, when given the word, each attempted to drink a small (four ounce) cup of Presidente beer while cheered on by an MC coming in hot over the PA system in Carribean English, Natura Park's Lingua Franca. Whoever drank it fastest won that particular round. During most of the time I was there, most of the contestants seemed to be Canadian, though there were also Germans, French, and Americans. The men tended to conclude their chugging by tapping their cups on the tops of their heads. In the end, awards were given to both the male and female champions. They were bottles of rum.
Food in the restaurant was better today than it had been yesterday, meaning that the taco shells and some form of bean had returned. Both before and during dinner there were a few amusing instances of power failure, each of which tended to make everyone gasp and hoot with delight, though the power was never out for even as long as a minute.
After dinner, Gretchen and I took a moonlit walk along the beach to the northwest of Natura Park. For miles, the beach here is completely undeveloped aside from a few makeshift off-grid houses. People are always talking in personal ads about moonlit walks on the beach, but I think this was the first time I'd ever actually gone on one. Happily, the moon was almost completely full.
Back at in our room, Gretchen and I tried to watch Bruce Almighty on the room's teevee, but it wasn't long before we tired of Jim Carrey's overacting and the movie's quasi-religious subtext. As I observed at the time, Jim Carrey poorly directed is like Robin Williams, both of whom hail from the Steve Martin school of comedic acting. But only Steve Martin can pull it off.
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